Advanced 100 Gbit/s Network To Speed Data Across the North Atlantic

A new transatlantic network will allow research and education users to transfer data between North America and Europe at speeds previously only possible within the continents. The advanced network, called ANA-200G, is the work of four research and education networks: Internet2, NORDUnet (a collaboration between the National Research and Education Networks of Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland), Canada's CANARIE and SURFnet in The Netherlands.

According to a statement from Internet2, ANA-200G is a redundant 100 Gbit/s ring spanning the North Atlantic. The network's ring nature — without single points of failure — protects against an outage in individual 100 Gbit/s transmission paths. ANA-200G comprises four open exchange points: MAN LAN in New York City, WIX in Washington, D.C., NetherLight in Amsterdam and GÉANT Open in London. An open connection policy at each of the exchange points enables anyone to connect to the exchange fabric (permission from the link owners is required).

Before ANA-200G, intercontinental data transmission speeds could not keep up with the advanced networks on the continents. Now, clear channel 100 Gbit/s data transfers will be possible between researchers in the United States and Northern Europe.

"Research and education are worldwide endeavors, with teams collaborating on single 'big science' projects across the globe," said Dave Lambert, president and CEO of Internet2, in a press release. "Likewise, leading R&E networks from around the world also partner on a global scale to jointly advance the state of the art for the benefit of the networks' users. With this major milestone in ANA-200G, we deliver on an important pathfinder for a novel Global Network Architecture for R&E that is just as robust as each of our domestic capabilities."

"ANA-200G advances not only subsea 100G technology and service roll-out, it also advances the way leading R&E networks work together," commented René Buch, CEO of NORDUnet. "This achievement brings new insights to sharing links, sharing operations, and sharing costs."

Demonstrations of ANA-200G will take place this week at the SuperComputing 2014 conference in New Orleans.

About the Author

About the author: Rhea Kelly is executive editor for Campus Technology. She can be reached at rkelly@1105media.com.